“What can I tell you?” said Pierce. Another glance back. “Well, there it goes.”

Coroner's attendants lifted a black body bag onto a gurney. As the wheels moved over the ravaged asphalt, the car rattled.

Milo said, “One second, Bob,” strode over, said something to the attendants, and waited as they unzipped the bag.

“So you're consulting,” Pierce said to me. “I've got a daughter at Cal State, wants to be a psychologist, maybe work with kids-”

Milo's voice made us both turn.

He'd walked past the coroner's station wagon, was standing near the east wall of the alley, half-concealed by a dumpster, the visible slice of his bulk whitened by a floodlight.

Pierce said, “What, now?” He and I went over.

The chalk outline of Melvin Myers's body had been drawn unevenly on the pitted tar. Right-angled. Folded. I could see where his foot had stuck out.

The oily rust of bloodstains all around.

A pothole in the center of the outline created a symbolic wound.

Milo pointed at the wall. His eyes were bright, cold, satisfied but enraged.

The red brick was blackened by decades of smog and grease and garbage distillate, a mad jumble of obscene graffiti.

I saw nothing but defacement. Same with Pierce. He said, “What?”

Milo walked to the wall, stooped, put his finger near something just inches from where the brick met the floor of the alley.

Behind the spot where Melvin Myers's head would have rested in death.

Pierce and I got closer. The garbage stench was overpowering.

Milo's fingertip pointed at four white letters, maybe half a handbreadth tall.

White chalk, just like the body outline, but fainter.

Block letters, printed neatly.

DVLL.

“That mean something?” said Pierce.

“It means I've complicated your life, Bob.”

Pierce put on his reading glasses and pushed his big jaw up to the letters.

“Not exactly permanent. Usually the idiots use spray paint.”

“It didn't need to be permanent,” I said. “The main thing was to deliver the message.”

Milo gave Pierce more details as we returned to Fourth Street.

“Different M.O.s, different divisions for each one,” said the Central detective. “Some piece of crap playing games?”

“That's what it looks like.”

“Who're the other Ds?”

“Hooks and McLaren in Southwest, Manny Alvarado in Newton, and we just picked one up that doesn't fit except for a DVLL link that's Hollywood's. D-I named Petra Connor, works with Stu Bishop.”

“Don't know her,” said Pierce. “One day Bishop's gonna be chief. Why isn't he in on it?”

“On vacation.”

“So what're we talking about, some coordinated effort?”

“Nothing to coordinate so far,” said Milo. “We've just been trading info and not much of it. Gorobich and Ramos did the whole crime-scene thing with the FBI and didn't get much either.”

Leaving out one particular detective.

Pierce clicked his upper teeth against his lowers. Perfect teeth. Dentures. “What do you want me to do, here?”

“Hey, Bob, far be it from me to tell you what to do.”

“Why not? My wife does. And her mother. And my daughters. And everyone else with a mouth… Okay, what I'm gonna do tonight is write this up as a 187 committed during a robbery. Then I'll try to see if Mr. Myers has a family. And a drug record. If there's a family, I make that call. If not, I visit the trade school tomorrow, see if he was a student, take it from there.”

Pierce smiled. “If I'm feeling really nasty, I call Bruce at midnight and tell him hey, guess what you'll probably still be working on when I'm fishing at Hayden Lake, trying to figure out which of my neighbors is an Aryan Nations nutcase and which one just hates people on general principle.”

“Would it traumatize you,” said Milo, “if I try to find out about Myers tonight? Run him through the files, maybe check out the school.”

“The school's closed.”

“Maybe they've got an off-hours number, someone who can confirm he was a student, tell us something about him.”

Pierce's eyes seemed to twinkle but the rest of his face expressed nothing. “Insomniac?”

“I've been living with this one for a while, Bob.”

“Yeah, go ahead, why not? You can call the family, too. And while you're at it, take my dog to the vet to get his anal glands squeezed.”

“Forget it. Don't mean to muscle in.”

“Hey, I'm kidding- go ahead, do what you want. I've got forty-eight days left before I trade smog for Nazis and no way am I gonna finish this one by then. Just keep me cued in from time to time, I need straight paper.”

He faced me. “This is police work in action. Enjoying the consulting, so far?”

Driving away, I said, “There's no way anyone else would have noticed those letters. A message but a private one.”

He twisted the wheel, drove to Sixth Street, hung a sharp left, and headed west, racing through the dark downtown streets. The only people visible were living out of shopping carts.

“Mug a blind guy, fake a robbery,” he said. “Telling us: Look how goddamn clever I am- press here for my score.”

He rolled up onto the freeway.

“Learn anything from the body?” I said.

“Not really. The poor guy was hashed.”

“So much for neat and clean,” I said. “So much for mercy killing. He's picked up the pace and increased the violence level. And the risk level: broad daylight. He may think he's got a serious philosophy but he's just another psychopath.”

“What's really picked up is his confidence level, Alex. He has no idea we even know what's going on, and with Carmeli's gag order we can't flush him out. Though what kind of warning could we issue? Anyone with a dark skin and a disability is a potential victim? Just what this city needs.”

“Anyone with dark skin and a disability plus Malcolm Ponsico. Who joined a group that just might believe handicapped people aren't human. Myers's death says we need to get closer to Meta, Milo. And why not use the fact that the killer doesn't know we're on to him as an advantage? I'll go to the bookstore, see if they've got a bulletin board, check out Zena Lambert. Maybe I can get invited to the next Meta party.”

We were going eighty-five on the 10, now. He passed under the bridge at the Crenshaw exit. “If Lambert turns out to be a literal femme fatale, chatting her up could be more than just a social thing.”

“Femme fatale,” I said. “So now you like the idea of a boy-girl killer team?”

“At this point, I'm not dismissing anything.”

“A collaboration could explain some of the diversity in M.O. Two self-rated geniuses getting together to play human chess. She serves as a lure, he steps in and does the heavy lifting. So when do I go to Spasm?”

“Thought you hated parties.”

“Sometimes I'm more social than others.”

We stopped for coffee at a fast-food stand on La Cienega, where I called Robin and told her there'd been another murder and I'd be late.

“My God- another retarded child?”

“A blind man.”

“Oh, Alex…”

“I'm sorry. It might be a while.”

“Yes… of course. How did it happen?”

“Fake mugging,” I said. “Downtown.”

I heard her inhale sharply. “Do what you have to do. But wake me when you get in. If I'm asleep.”

It was after eleven by the time we returned to Sharavi's house. He took a while to answer the door, had clearly been sleeping but he did his best to hide it.

The gold eyes were red-rimmed. He wore a plain white T-shirt and green cotton athletic shorts. As he ushered us in, he revealed his good hand and the black-matte pistol dangling from it.

“Plastic,” said Milo. “Glock.”